Double Strike Gladiator Build Guide (PoE Synthesis 3.6)

Introduction

Although instant life leech is mostly a thing of the past in Path of Exile, there are still ways to achieve it. The Bloodseeker unique Claw grands instant life leech when you hit with it. Although it has low physical damage, the critical chance and attack speed are decent. By using Double Strike you gain a lot of flat physical damage against bleeding enemies, which compensates the claw’s low physical damage. Gladiator’s Gratuitous Violence boost the clear speed of the build by a great deal, while Vaal Double Strike in combination with an Ancestral Warchief totem helps you melt down endgame bosses.

When it comes to survivability, you mainly depend on the instant leech and Gladiator’s high Block Chance. The end-game damage is enough to out leech any hits that do not one-shot you. Block Chance to attacks and spells will help you completely mitigate a portion of the incoming hits. We mainly focus on building a great life pool in order to prevent getting one-shot.

Build Summary

This build is very budget-friendly. The main build-enabling item is Bloodseeker, which you ideally want to dual wield. For expensive endgame goals you can also use one Bloodseeker and a very well rolled physical Claw. Essentially this will boost your damage by a great deal, while you are also able to rely on instant leech, since every second hit will be with the Bloodseeker Claw. For other gear pieces, we recommend focusing on rare items with as much life, flat physical damage, critical modifiers and attack speed as possible. Belly of the Beast and Loreweave are both great choices. For endgame you can also use a well rolled Elder-based chest piece. Using rare Steel Rings will bring a lot of damage with the additional flat physical damage to attacks they provide. The helm, boots and gloves should simply have as much life and resistances as possible. You do not need movement speed on the boots since you will mainly rely on Whirling Blades for movement. Additional attack speed and flat physical damage can be acquired by using decently rolled gloves.

Pros & Cons

Pros

+ Hardcore viable
+ Can be started without any currency investment
+ Scales very well into late game

Cons

- Melee builds force you to get into more dangerous situations than ranged ones
- Cannot do reflect and no leech maps

Playstyle

Offensively, Gratuitous Violence’s explosions will smooth out your clear speed by a great deal. This mechanic also scales very well with monster’s increasing life later on in the game. The single target damage potential is very high. When encountering a tough foe, you have to do a quick setup, which will ensure you do great amounts of damage. Dropping Ancestral Warchief along with summoning your clones via Vaal Double Strike is enough to take most bosses down. As long as you have enough life regeneration to out-regenerate the Blood Rage‘s degeneration effect, you are able to also benefit from Damage on Full Life Support. Whirling Blades is the movement skill, which you will be mostly relying on in order to move around.

Defensively, the instant leech along with your great life pool and Block Chance will ensure you do not get into sticky situations very often. As long as you do not get one-shot and stay offensive, you should be able to out-leech any incoming damage. Degeneration effects like burning, ground effects, bleeds, beams and such are not considered hits, therefore they cannot be Blocked. When it comes to dealing with bleeds and mainly Corrupted Blood, you should rely on your bleed removal flask. The endgame version of the passive skill tree can achieve more than 250% Increased Maximum Life, which is insane, considering the damage potential of the build. This can translate into more than 9k life when properly geared. Based on personal preference, you can always drop some life and spec into more damage if you feel like it.

For Playstyle, as long as you know most of the game’s one-shot mechanics, you should be able to survive any content. This build allows for very aggressive playstyle. Your high attack speed also translates into more mobility, since it scales the speed of your Whirling Blades. You should be able to explode most packs with one or two attacks of Double Strike. Keeping up Blood Rage all the time is recommended.

Ascendancy, Passive Tree, Bandits and Pantheons

Ascendancy (Duelist – Gladiator)

Blood in the Eyes

Gratuitous Violence

Outmatch and Outlast

Painforged

Blood in the Eyes will provide additional chance to bleed enemies, which is essential when it comes to benefiting from the additional damage Double Strike gives against bleeding enemies. You will also deal additional damage to maimed enemies. Blinding enemies with your attacks will reduce enemies’ Accuracy Rating by 50%. Gratuitous Violence will improve your clear speed by a great deal via the physical explosions. The additional bleed chance augments Double Strike even more. Outmatch and Outlast has great balance between offence and defence, it will help you with the uptime of Endurance and Frenzy Charges. Painforged provides additional Block Chance if you’ve been hit recently, which will help with recovery after getting hit.

Such a build can also be played as Champion, Juggernaut, Ascendant and others. Gladiator has great balance between offence and defence, which is why we chose it in this particular case.

Passive Tree

This is what our endgame passive skill tree should look like. We mainly focus on picking as much life as possible. For offensive nodes, we are looking for dual wield, one-handed and Claw nodes. Since you will most likely not level using claws from the beginning, you should aim to pick up one-handed and dual wield nodes first. We recommend speccing into Claw and critical nodes at level 62+, once you are able to equip Bloodseeker. All the leech you need will be provided by the Soul Raker Claw node, prior to it you can spec into some life and mana leech near Duelist’s starting area. Aim for at least 4k life by level 75.

When it comes to passive skill tree pathing, you should start by picking up Dervish, then head to Marauder’s life and damage nodes – Warrior’s Blood, Heart of the Warrior, Born to Fight and Strong Arm. Next, you should pick up the Scion life wheel and start heading to the right side of the passive skill tree.

Bandits

As in most critical-based builds, we recommend helping Alira for the additional 20% Critical Multiplier and +15% to all Elemental Resistances. This outweighs the two passive skill points that you will receive by killing all the bandits.

Pantheons

Major: Both Soul of Arakaali and Soul of Solaris are solid choices, since they can provide a lot of passive damage mitigation when fully upgraded. Choose between them depending on the content you are running.

Minor: We recommend the upgraded version of Soul of Ralakesh for most critical-based attack builds. The blind immunity proves to be very strong in certain situations, while the maim immunity is also helpful. The bleed mitigation is just another reason to pick this minor god power. Based on personal preference, other minor Pantheons can be used.

Gems

Vaal Double Strike is your signature skill, which should ideally be used in a 6-Link. For mobility, use Whirling Blades. Hatred and Herald of Purity will provide a lot of damage to the build. Ancestral Warchief can be used to augment your damage for single target fights. A charged-up War Banner can be placed on the ground in order to give you the Adrenaline buff for extreme burst potential (Adrenaline grants the following: 100% increased Damage, 25% increased Attack, Cast, and Movement Speed, 10% additional Physical Damage Reduction).

For all the gem links we provide below, keep in mind that we list the gems in order of priority (starting from the top left, going to the right on each row of the links), meaning that if you lack the required number of sockets to fit all the gems, the first ones to drop are the ones at the bottom (with the bottom right being the last). Also note that in-game, as long as the sockets are linked, it makes no difference at all what order the gems are placed in.

Vaal Double Strike (6-Link)

Double Strike is a single target melee skill, which when linked with the right support gems becomes a very powerful clearing tool. Ancestral Call Support allows you to attack 3 enemies at a time, while Melee Splash Support makes your attacks deal area of effect around the target. Double Strike deals considerably more damage against bleeding targets. The Vaal version of the skill summons a copy of yourself, which keeps attacking the target for a duration; this greatly improves build’s single target damage potential. We recommend two different gem links for clearing and single target.

Other Gems

You should have Blood Rage up all the time. Hatred and Herald of Purity are offensive buffs that synergize very well with the build. War Banner will provide some handy Accuracy Rating and increased Physical damage, you should drop it on the ground when fighting tougher enemies.

Gearing

Capping your elemental resistances is essential and it should always be your top priority in any build; it should be the first thing you do when gearing up a character. Obtaining a 6-link, while very powerful and certainly recommended, can potentially be very expensive (requiring an average of 1500 Orbs of Fusing, obviously depending on your luck); as such, this should not really be a goal for you while gearing up, and you should instead settle for a 5-link until you have enough resources.

Gearing the Double Strike Gladiator can be very cheap in its early stages. Once you hit level 62, you should buy two Bloodseeker Claws, which should be very cheap. Most leagues they go around for about 1 or 2 Chaos Orbs. Aiming for perfect rolls will cost more than that of course, but considering this is our endgame weapon it is still very cheap. Besides that, focus on gear pieces with a lot of life and elemental resistances. For more damage, try to get better jewelry with more flat physical damage.

Helmet

A well-rolled rare helmet is best in slot for the build. Abyssus provides a great amount of damage but makes you take way physical more damage. For labyrinth enchant, look for “Double Strike has a 15% chance to deal Double Damage to Bleeding Enemies”. The Rare Affix Priority is:

Elemental resistances (until capped)

Maximum Life (at least 80)

% Increased Maximum Life (Pristine Fossil)

Nearby Enemies take % Increased Physical Damage (Jagged Fossil)

Body Armour

Belly of the Beast and Loreweave are both great endgame choices for the build. For rare body armours, we recommend using an Elder base. The Rare Affix Priority is:

Elemental resistances (until capped)

Maximum Life (at least 100)

% Increased Maximum Life (Pristine Fossil; Elder Prefix)

Socketed Gems are supported by Level 1 Maim (Serrated Fossil)

Attacks have #% to Critical Strike Chance (Elder Suffix)

Gloves

Well rolled rare gloves are best in slot. Spiked Gloves are the best base, since they have implicit that provides additional melee damage. The Rare Affix Priority is:

Elemental resistances (until capped)

Maximum Life (at least 60)

Adds # to # Physical Damage to Attacks

% Increased Attack Speed

Accuracy Rating (at least 250)

Boots

Rare boots are best in slot. You do not need movement speed on boots since you only rely on your movement skill for mobility. For tough endgame encounters you can use Kaom's Roots for the Freezing and Stun immunity. For labyrinth enchant, look for “% Increased Attack and Cast Speed if you’ve Killed Recently”. The Rare Affix Priority is:

Elemental resistances (until capped)

Maximum Life (at least 90)

Intelligence (if needed)

Belt

A well-rolled rare Stygian Vise is best in slot. The additional Abyssal socket provides more power than other belt implicit stats. Belt of the Deceiver can be used early on. The Rare Affix Priority is:

Elemental resistances (until capped)

Maximum Life (at least 80)

Elemental Damage with Attacks (at least 25%)

Amulet

A well-rolled rare amulet is best in slot. Look for Elder base with the mod “Gain % of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage”. This is a great damage boost for the build. The Rare Affix Priority is:

Elemental resistances (until capped)

Maximum Life (at least 60)

Gain % of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage (Elder Prefix)

Adds # to # Physical Damage to Attacks

Elemental Damage with Attacks (at least 20%)

Critical Multiplier

Critical Chance

Rings

Considering the build is not very unique-dependent and you will not have problem with capping elemental resistances, you should look for well rolled Steel Rings. The Rare Affix Priority is:

Elemental resistances (until capped)

Maximum Life (at least 50)

Adds # to # Physical Damage to Attacks

Elemental Damage with Attacks (at least 20%)

Attributes (anything you need in order to fill stat requirements)

Weapons

Dual wielding two Bloodseeker Claws will allow you to deal with all endgame bosses the game has to offer. If you have a lot of currency to spend, you can craft or buy a well rolled rare Claw with at least 400 pDPS and decent Critical Chance. Simply use such a Claw in your main-hand and keep one Bloodseeker in your off-hand in order to top off your life pool every time you alternate weapons when attacking. The Rare Affix Priority is:

% Increased Physical Damage

Flat Physical Damage

% Increased Attack Speed

% increased Critical Strike Chance (aim for at least 6,5%)

% Increased Critical Multiplier

Flasks

There are many flask choices that can increase your damage output considerably. For more budget-friendly options, you should look for Atziri's Promise and Lion's Roar. Taste of Hate can be expensive, but very powerful. As in every other critical-based build, a Diamond Flask is mandatory, ideally you would want to craft “% Increased Critical Strike Chance During Flask Effect”, although this can get pricey. Divine Life Flask can be used in sticky situations, you should have it instant or half-instant with bleed removal suffix. For more defence you can use other utility flasks like Basalt, Granite, Ruby, Sapphire or Topaz. For more damage you can put in a Sulphite Flask.

Jewels

The Double Strike Gladiator does not require any unique jewel. Rapid Expansion can be used early on if you decide to level with Ground Slam. A Watcher's Eye with Hatred mods provides a lot of damage, although it can be very expensive. Regular rare jewels should be prioritized over Abyssal jewels. Ideally, you would want one corrupted jewel with the mod “Corrupted Blood cannot be inflicted on you”.

It is fairly easy to level a dual wielding melee build with skills like Ground Slam. You can switch to fully relying on Double Strike around level 55-60, when you ascend into Gratuitous Violence, which will smooth out your clear speed. Until then it may feel kind of clunky. Overall the Double Strike Gladiator is very easy to level, even with no investment into leveling gear.

Leveling Trees

This is a very early representation of what your passive skill tree should look like. After that you can head to the Scion life wheel if you do not have enough life. Next, you should start going to the right side of the passive skill tree and get ready to pick up the Claw nodes. Your passive skill tree should look like this around level 80ish.

Useful Leveling Unique Items

As you begin a new character, there are few unique items that can boost your power exponentially. Tabula Rasa allows you to have a 6-Linked skill as early as you get the gems. Wanderlust gives a decent movement speed, which will make your leveling that much more efficient. Goldrim provides a lot of elemental resistances, this will let you worry less about gearing when approaching certain Act encounters. Redbeak and The Screaming Eagle provide great amount of damage which can easily carry you up to Act IV.

If you are a new player (or if this is your first character for the league), then note that obtaining these items will be very difficult, if not impossible. They are rare drops, which you can otherwise only acquire if you have saved up currency, so do not focus on them too much, and instead simply look for items that match the affix priorities listed in the gearing section above.

Gem Progression

Using Tabula Rasa will allow you to have 6-Link gem setups early on, which is why we show such examples below. If you cannot get Tabula Rasa (or another item with a 6-Link), then simply prioritize the first gems in each link provided below.

In order to acquire gems that are not available to your class as a quest reward, simply ask a friend to buy them off vendors for you, or buy them yourself from Sioasa in The Library in Act III Library.

Conclusion

The Double Strike Gladiator can take on any type of content and has very high endgame potential. Utilizing instant life leech is not something that many builds can do nowadays. It basically allows you to tank any hit that does not instantly kill you. This will allow you to survive many encounters that other builds cannot.

Fantastic guide everything is straight forward and very easy to follow.Thank you very much for taking the time to write it all out. I do have one question whirling blades is very buggy on ps4 causing rubber banding and death. Do you have any skill recommendations for a alternate? I currently swapped to phase run linked to increase duration but wanted to see if you have any ideas.

Fantastic guide everything is straight forward and very easy to follow.Thank you very much for taking the time to write it all out. I do have one question whirling blades is very buggy on ps4 causing rubber banding and death. Do you have any skill recommendations for a alternate? I currently swapped to phase run linked to increase duration but wanted to see if you have any ideas.

Hey, thanks for the kind feedback. When it comes to movement skills, Whirling Blades is the only reliable one that can be used with Claws unfortunately. The rubber-banding might be caused by a bad internet connection in combination with Lockstep mod, try switching between the two and see how it works.

Thanks for this template, as a new player this will help me a lot.
Guess double claw for reliable than double axes for late game content.

Also, can you tell me which passive to focus ?
Is Strong arm > Golem’s Blood > Heart of Oak // Path of the warrior > Claw // Soul Raker (end at 62 to match the bloodseeker) a good path ?

These nodes should be good enough, we choose to use Claws simply because of the instant leech Bloodseeker provides, which is very strong and unobtainable in other ways at the moment. Vaal Double Strike is a great skill that compensates when it comes to the low pDPS of the Claws.